2013 IPA Media Owner Awards winners

Yahoo, ITV.com, The Guardian and Sky Media are just some of the winners from last night’s dazzling IPA Media Owner Awards (MOA), which reward the industry’s most innovative and effective activity and individuals from the world of online media.

From a shortlist of 58, 16 awards and 13 commendations were presented at the stunning Supernova pop up venue in London’s Embankment Gardens. Eight awards were submission-based, from the award for Best Online Campaign, to Most Innovative Technology, to the new award for Rising Star of the Year. The additional eight awards were based on the results of the IPA’s Online Media Owner Survey (a combination of spring, autumn and year-on-year results), including Best Media Owner, Best Partner and Best at Innovation.

The judging panel for the submission-based awards was chaired by Pete Robins and included members of the IPA Digital Media Group as well as two client judges; Jane Savage, Head of Digital and eCommerce at Johnson & Johnson and Dan Radford, Head of Digital Marketing Strategy at The Walt Disney Company.

Says Pete Robins, IPA Digital Media Group Chairman and Managing Partner, Agenda 21: “As Chairman of Judges for these awards, I have been really pleased by the forward thinking and effective campaigns that this year’s winners have executed. I have also been hugely impressed with the winners of the individual awards; their enthusiasm for doing inventive work shone through, coupled with their ability to balance their clients’ needs has led to some great, mutually beneficial outcomes. Judging these awards shows, again, just how much really good work is happening in our industry.”

Says Nigel Gwilliam, IPA Consultant Head of Digital: “Once again these Awards have not only uncovered a wealth of talent but they also bear witness to how best practice can pay off for both agencies and their trading partners. Congratulations to all these highly deserving winners.”

The awards scheme identity draws its heritage from a moa; a large now extinct, (although sometimes spotted at awards ceremonies!) New Zealand bird that walked the earth for 60 million years.

Summaries on winning campaigns/personalities

Submission-based MOA winners and commendations:

Most Innovative Technology

Winner – AdVox, Qriously: Qriously have built the world’s first Question Network for brands and introduced a novel channel to reach consumers across it called ‘Opinion Targeting’. Underpinning both is a platform that lets agencies buy questions to target mobile ads based on declared consumer interestÍ¾ consumers self-select by expressing their opinion in response to these questions. Agencies can then use the opinions generated to uncover consumer intent and match this with advertisers’ ads on smartphones.

Highly Commended - Householding, Specific Media: On average there are 5.5 connected devices per UK household. Previously advertisers required separate TV, mobile, online and video buys to reach them. Today, with Householding™, all household devices are reached through a single-source for delivery and reporting. Specific Media used its wealth of data and proprietary tools to identify devices in a connected household, creating the ability to group devices and target them with advertising in one simple campaign. This unique targeting method not only changed the way media agencies can buy, but applied a human touch by considering users’ consumption across multiple devices to deliver ads accordingly.

Unsung Hero

Winner - Sean Dillon, Head of Advertising Technology, Telegraph Media Group: Sean is highly regarded in the world of Advertising Operations, constantly referred to as a guru and go-to-guy by colleagues, peers and industry leaders. He has touchpoints across all departments and is pivotal in all product launches, developments and day-to-day troubleshooting. If he cannot find an original and innovative technology to meet the demands of the business or clients, he will use his spare time to invent a tool. Without Sean and his continuous behind the scenes magic the Telegraph would not have such a strong position in the market.

Highly Commended - Caoimhe Cox, Senior Account Manager, RadiumOne: Nominated originally by Initiative, Caoimhe has been invaluable to RadiumOne’s business from day one. Caoimhe’s learning at Google has set her on her way to great success in the media industry. She is able to deal with high volumes of work, whilst being proactive and genuinely caring of her clients. Her can-do attitude allows her to solve problems with ease, and if she can’t solve them outright, an alternative is always offered. Agencies see her as an extension of their team. In just nine months, Caoimhe has encouraged clients that were spending £10k per month to now spend over £70k.

Highly Commended - Enkeleda Mata, Platform Solutions Consultant, DoubleClick Search by Google: Enkeleda Mata has applied the learning from her university studies and her career in technology and business to various roles in the search advertising arena, to now Google, where she focuses on providing premium level service. She has introduced an innovative approach to providing consultative solutions, focused on maximising advertising ROI and client satisfaction. This has resulted in highly successful business outcomes, including a 134% increase in sales for ZenithOptimedia, and a 64% increase in conversions for MPG.

Rising Star

Winner - Gillian Roberts, Creative Multiplatform Manager, ITV.com: Gill worked across the Manchester launches of two difficult properties: Xfm radio station and The London Paper. She learned very early on that giving people a hands-on experience of the product gets results, so she took a group of agency buyers down to London to distribute the London paper to commuters at Liverpool Street. Her innovation and tenacity, coupled with her relationship building skills and her relentless drive to succeed, delivered a 200% increase on the paper’s previous year’s revenue. Her additional achievements have included increasing Carat’s digital spend with ITV regions by 900% and authoring ITV’s first ever digital training course. Gill Roberts is a digital expert, creative genius, saleswoman extraordinaire and one of the most exciting emerging talents in media.

Highly Commended - Jacquie Penn, Group Head, AOL: Having spent some time on the agency planning side, Jacqui joined AOL in late 2010. Due to her planning experience she is a natural for sales, having built up a winning skillset for bringing brands and media together. Nine months after joining she was promoted to Group Head and has since led the way in driving AOL’s strategy around branded content, introducing brands such as BMW, Bodyform, Chevrolet and Tourism Ireland to content-led brand solutions.

Highly Commended - Holly Stamp, UK Sales Manager, Exponential: Holly Stamp is one of Exponential Interactive’s rising stars. Since joining the company at the end of 2011 as a Sales Manager, Holly has worked on one of the largest and most diverse patches, growing the business 53% year-on-year and earning the respect of both her clients and colleagues.

Best Cross-Media Campaign

Winner - ‘Heat4’, Bauer Media for Channel 4: Heat4 was a ground-breaking collaboration between Bauer Media and Channel 4. Taking advantage of the emerging dual screen behaviours amongst their shared fan bases, they set out to make an exciting content experience. Bauer Media took three hero shows over summer 2012 and created three companion live, dual screen programmes streamed simultaneously with twitter onto Heatworld.com and E4.com during the ad breaks.

Highly Commended - ‘Conversations Start Here’, AOL for Huffington Post UK: Six months after launch, HuffPost UK was ninth in the market. A marketing strategy was needed that would both drive penetration rapidly and establish HuffPost as a relevant brand to UK audiences. Tapping into the realisation that news is now a conversation that carries across the web and that HuffPost is leading this trend, HuffPost created the brand promise – ‘Conversations Start Here’. Their media strategy was constructed around clever ways of showcasing actual news conversations in contextually appropriate environments. The results were impressive with HuffPost leaping from 9th to 5th in the news market by the end of 2012.

Highly Commended – ‘Keep Britain Smiling’, Global Radio for Colgate: How do you get people excited about toothpaste, never mind get them to socially engage with the brand on Facebook? The ‘Keep Britain Smiling’ campaign on Heart achieved this by encouraging a huge audience across the Heart site and Facebook to join Pixie Lott in creating a brand new music video. Colgate wanted 100,000 interactions in order to unlock a £100,000 charity donation to Barnardo’s; Global Radio delivered over 300,000.

Best Online Campaign

Winner - ‘Life of Pi’, Yahoo! for Twentieth Century Fox: A film about a boy who survives a shipwreck, only to find himself lost at sea, in a lifeboat and in the company of a Royal Bengal tiger was considered a tricky proposition to audiences. Yet Yahoo rose to the challenge and contributed to the film’s success by capturing the attention of millions of users worldwide. It achieved this by defying conventional movie marketing and instead drew inspiration from the movie’s themes to establish emotional connections with users in order to build awareness and create wonder.

Highly Commended - ‘Guardian Witness powered by EE’, The Guardian for EE: The transformative power of 4G comes to life via the ground-breaking launch of GuardianWitness: the fastest way for citizens to make the news. GuardianWitness is a platform for users to contribute stories via video, pictures and text. Together, EE4G and the Guardian have come together to power the network of citizen journalists and transform the way the news is seen.

Highly Commended - ‘Food Channel Partnership’, Microsoft Advertising for Sainsbury’s and MSN: In order to increase consumer spend, MSN realised the importance of appealing to both consumers’ hearts and minds. MSN achieved this by creating The Food Channel, a category-defining centralised content partnership for Sainsbury’s that delivered an immersive user experience and a clear differentiation from its high spending competitors. The Food channel became the first, fully-fledged editorial channel to be launched on MSN.

Commercial Director

Winner - Steve Doyle, European Commercial Director, InSkin Media: Steve has been instrumental in the success of InSkin Media, not only in 2012-2013, but since the company’s commercial launch. This year alone, he has overseen company growth of 50%, increased the sales department to more than 15 across three countries, and is leading the IAB Video Council. His understanding of the market and the skills required to succeed, coupled with his understanding of people and relationships, make him a first class leader. Steve leads from the front and is well-liked and respected by his team, the business and the wider industry.

Best Un-featured Media Owner

Winner - Global Radio: Global Radio is immensely proud of the achievements of its entire team this year. Changes such as a total overhaul of their systems, to the introduction of brand new commercial initiatives including the Social Amplifier and Airtime+ have contributed to a successful 12 months. This is the year that they sought to inspire their clients and agencies via unique opportunities across all their platforms.

Highly Commended - Rocket Fuel: Being one of the first ad technology companies to leverage advanced real time bidding has given Rocket Fuel a head-start with strong knowledge of how to build successful campaigns. As a business they are striving to be best in class, not just in performance, but also in delivering insight and the best customer service possible. Rocket Fuel views itself as a trusted partner to agencies and brands, rather than a technology vendor. They focus intensely on accountability and superior customer service to support their clients’ campaigns and to exceed their expectations.

Highly Commended - ESI Media: The ESI Media digital agency-facing team has greatly evolved over the years, particularly over the past two years since The Independent digital team took on Standard.co.uk and brought their sales in-house from their out-sourced sales houses. Although ESI Media are a small sales team in comparison to the long established online newspaper competitors, they punch well above their weight. They pride themselves on the quality of their commercial solutions, team spirit and the level of servicing they provide clients.

Sales Newcomer

Winner - Adrian Vella, Search Account Manager, Yahoo!: Adrian has excelled in his time at Yahoo. Straight out of university, Adrian has been an enthusiastic and a quick learner, rapidly establishing himself as a key part of the search team. Agencies and direct clients find him very approachable and efficient. Adrian has surpassed financial targets; in his first full quarter he grew revenue in his book of business by 61% (£600k) and was the top salesperson of the site links product in EMEA.

Highly Commended - Tricia Fallows, Senior Sales Executive, AOL: Tricia joined AOL in November 2012 and has since become one of the team’s top performers. Tasked with building a successful relationship with Mindshare, Tricia collaborated closely with them to understand their objectives, ultimately putting them front and centre of her work to create innovative campaigns and partnerships. Her hard work paid off, resulting in a 340% increase in Mindshare spend from the last six months versus the first six months of 2012.

Highly Commended - Shinal Patel, Digital Sales Executive, Telegraph Media Group: Since arriving at the Telegraph, Shinal has gone from strength to strength; she has taken advantage of every opportunity that has come her way and has received widespread praise from both internal and external stakeholders. From Sales Team Coordinator to managing and growing seven figure agency accounts, she has an extremely bright future ahead of her and has helped to create the blue print of how the digital team develop internal talent. Survey-based MOA winners:

Most Improved at Partnership

Winner - The Guardian: The Guardian is a media owner to watch in 2014. An improving sense of partnership together with their award for Most Improved at Innovation makes this a positive year for The Guardian.

Best Partner

Winner - Say Media: Say Media performed fantastically in the spring survey, placing in the top three in ten of the 13 survey questions, including five top places. They followed this up in the autumn with six top three places, including two wins. Agencies place a great deal of value on a sense of partnership and this breadth of performance shows why Say Media came out on top.

Most Improved at Cross-Media

Winner - Sky Media: Sky posted a very strong improvement between autumn 2012 and spring 2013. Crucially, they continued the upward trend again in the back half of the year. They are definitely a media owner to watch, with their next goal to move from a ‘Most Improved’ award to a ‘Best’.

Best at Cross-Media

Winner - Telegraph.co.uk: Telegraph.co.uk has made this award their own, collecting it for the third consecutive year. They scored highest for understanding cross media in both 2013 surveys making it an unprecedented seven in a row in this position.

Most Improved at Innovation

Winner - The Guardian: In the early years of the IPA online media owner survey, The Guardian helped set the bar for creativity and innovation. By improving their performance across both of the last two survey periods, they are back to their winning ways, posting a greater improvement year-on-year than any other media owner.

Best at Innovation

Winner - Say Media: This was a tightly contested category with the top places changing hands from the spring to autumn surveys. Consistency was key with Say Media; they were the only business to score over 60 in both surveys, as well as coming top in the spring.

Most Improved Media Owner

Winner - Sky Media: Sky has made enormous strides in the last 12 months. A year ago they were languishing at the bottom of the survey results but this win, as well as the number of additional ‘most improved’ categories they’ve been shortlisted for, signals a media owner taking service very seriously.

Best Media Owner

Winner - InSkin Media: InSkin’s first appearance in the IPA survey was at the top in spring this year. A single excellent performance, however, is not enough to win the Best Media Owner. Showing great consistency, they placed third in the autumn survey making them the only supplier to feature in the top three across both 2013 surveys.